CHICAGO. After her speech in Chicago in which she introduced herself to America as an immigrant who grew up in the middle class, she built her campaign on a “sharp contrast” with Trump and positioned her America in the wake of an unusual patriotism for the latitudes of the liberal left.Kamala Harris has taken the road to Washington. Yesterday she returned to her residence at the Naval Observatory. Tim Walz, the vice presidential candidate now Coach Tim, returned to Minnesota.
The campaign machine, however, is already in gear and the Democratic agenda includes a joint interview – but all the details, where, media, and when, are missing – and new rallies in swing states.
The departure should be from Georgia where the last of the mid-August tour was canceled due to a hurricane. The vice-president left the United Center at 11:30 and the crew of the Nbc who “surprised” her in the basement of the arena showed her satisfaction with the final night of the Convention. The tens of thousands of red, white and blue balloons released from the ceiling overwhelmed family members and delegates, closing the party. Now – as Harris herself repeated – there is work to be done. “Do something,” as Michelle Obama’s slogan borrowed from the call that Kamala’s mother often made: “If you see an injustice, don’t complain, but do something.” Doing is about transforming the batch of enthusiasm into action. Or better yet, into votes.
The challenge to Trump is tough, the polls are trending positive, but both Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020 at the end of August were ahead of Trump and with better numbers than Kamala Harris. But this is a particularly short race that overturns forecasts and readings, having no precedent for entering the field 100 days before Election Day.
On the subway that takes delegates from the United Center to the Convention hotels on Thursday evening, we met Julia. Peruvian, but transplanted to Chicago. For four weeks, every Saturday afternoon, she goes to the campaign offices to make phone calls seeking votes, and mobilizing the base. “We will multiply our efforts, make more calls and involve more people,” she tells us, summarizing the message that the campaign leaders have sown in recent days.
Joy, in fact, is not enough, Kamala Harris would like to avoid ending up like Hubert Humphrey. He too was chosen at the Convention in Chicago (1968); he too took the place of the president who renounced the second term (Lyndon Johnson) and he too was called a “happy warrior”. He ended up (un)happily overwhelmed by Richard Nixon in the elections.
Dan Kanninen, the organization’s chief swing state strategist, is pulling the strings to turn “a very real and powerful organic energy into action.” Spread across the seven key states are 260 offices and a staff (employees of varying degrees) of 1,500. The last week before the convention saw a global addition of 60,000 volunteers, and the Chicago effect and phone calls like Julia’s promise to increase that number. The mistake would be to rest on our laurels of enthusiasm and repeat the mistake of Hillary Clinton who in 2016 ignored states like Michigan and Wisconsin, taking them for granted. He then lost the election. And the example to follow is that of Hillary Scholten, congresswoman, who won in 2022 a seat that for 32 years was Republican.
Karlyn Bowman, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says that “everything will be decided by a few thousand ballots.” Ten to 12 percent of potential voters need to be persuaded, she says, but even though Harris gave an effective speech, attention to political events is limited. The first real test will be the televised debate on September 10 in Philadelphia. And the campaigns already have teams of coaches and sparring partners to better prepare their leaders.
Trump’s world is attacking the vice president for the lack of details on her plan for America. “It’s a battle between style and substance,” Vivek Ramaswamy, a former rival and now Trump adviser, summed up in a briefing with reporters, mocking the Democrats’ “lots of glitter, little content” – as he called it. The response from Harris’s staff is that “policy proposals will be released in the coming weeks.” So far, the vice president has only outlined ideas for the economy.
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